insectlove:

electricorchid: The Hooded Grasshopper (Teratodus monticollis) hails from India and Sri Lanka and feeds on the leaves of sandalwood. | +

biomedicalephemera:

The Giant King Cricket (Anostostoma australasiae)

A member of the same family as the Giant Wetas of New Zealand, the Giant King Cricket is the heaviest cricket in Australia, and is one of the largest in the world. Living in the rainforest environments of Queensland and New South Wales, these Orthoptera emerge only on wet nights, and eat slow-moving insects and rotting fruit.

King Crickets aren’t threatened or endangered, though they’re not exactly easy to find. As burrowers, the only real chance for an inexperienced explorer to find one is under significant piles of leaf detritus. But hey! If you’re ever stranded in the Queensland/NSW rainforest and come across one, they apparently make as good a meal as the New Zealand wetas! They might not taste great uncooked, but they’re not deadly, and aren’t especially skittish critters, at the least.

The Naturalist’s Library: Introduction to Entomology. James Duncan, Edited by William Jardin, 1840.

Tiny New Species Hops Around Beliz

(by Jennifer Welsh) (photo credit: Sam W. Heads, Steven J. Taylor) 

A newfound species of a tiny, grasshopperlike insect seems to be quite lonely, being the first of its family to be discovered in Belize, according to researchers.

Scientists from the University of Illinois found the little hopper in the tropical rain forests of southern Belizeand named it Ripipteryx mopana, after a tribe of Mayans native to the region known as the Mopan people. The grasshopperlike species uses its large jumping hind legs to escape predators.

Read more: http://www.livescience.com/18490-tiny-grasshopper-belize.html

Water-meadow Grasshopper (Chorthippus montanus) (Orthoptera: Acrididae) 

(by Kvejlend on Flickr)

A macro photograph of Green Milkweed Locust (Phymateus viridipes) from South Africa.The hidden rainbow coloured wings are only visible when the locust opens up it’s wings.

(photo/text by Martin_Heigan on Flickr)

Spiny grouse locust (Discotettix sp) (by artour_a on Flickr)

Sarawak, Borneo

rhamphotheca:

Welcome Trust Blog:  Monogamy Is Easy

by Fiona Lethbridge

It’s hard enough having to spread yourself thinly during your normal daily activities – work, sustenance, childcare, rest, the list goes on. Luckily for us monogamous types, our efforts in the bedroom are most often directed towards one individual. Imagine, though, the dilemma of having to divide your reproductive resources between many partners. If you were a male seed beetle (Callosobruchus maculatus), you might face this very problem. You would have a limited supply of ejaculate, numerous females of differing ages and reproductive states, lots of rival males, and about a week to live. To fulfil your evolutionary potential and achieve reproductive success you need to prioritise your sexual encounters – do you allocate a little of your seed to several different females, which may offer fairly decent returns, or do you use up all your sperm on one ripe, virgin female in the hope of fertilising each one of her hundreds of eggs? 

Sperm is not a limitless resource. Males often have to use it economically to maximise their lifetime reproductive success. In many insects the situation is complex because females store sperm internally from several different mates, much of which is surplus to requirement, so not all males that achieve copulation can be guaranteed paternity. However, males can sometimes bolster their chances, by adopting certain strategies to overcome this sperm competition.

As a promiscuous insect it is essential to assess your surroundings. For example, if you were a male cricket (Gryllus veletis) you might want to allocate lots of sperm when copulating if there is another male waiting his turn with the female, in attempt to father a greater share of the resultant clutch than he does. If there are ten rival males around, you’d probably be better holding onto your ejaculate for now and saving your sperm for other, less competitive situations…

(read more: Welcome Trust Blog)  

(image: male Spring Field Cricket, Gryllus veletis, by Kurt Andreas)

Bark camouflaged grouse locust (by pbertner on Flickr)

(photo by vaskos66 on Flickr)

Grasshopper’s - 3some - ♂♂♀ 

2 male (blue tegmina) & 1 female (green tegmina) Grasshoppers
sat in harmony on this culm for hours; they hear with their first abdominal segment and use vibrations to locate each other.
Even when they reach maturity wings are not fully developed so they can not fly. In the rice fields they are prey to dragonflies and the local communities also collect them to eat.

Caryanda spuria STÅL, 1861
Subfamily: Oxyinae
Famiily: Acrididae (Feldheuschrecken)
Superfamily: Acridoidea
Infraorder: Acrididea
Suborder: Caelifera (short-horned grasshopper, Kurzfühlerschrecken)
Order: Orthoptera (Springschrecken)

http://orthoptera.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=52337

Indonesia, W-Java, 33km WNW Bogor (Halimun-Salak-NP): vic. Cipeteuy (at the edge of paddy fields), ca. 1100m asl., 21.09.2010

*Description: ~2cm, yellow body with black bands, yellow legs and blue-green knees. The upper-side of ♂ is green and the tegmina (hardened fore-wings) are blue-metallic while ♀ show a brown upper-side and tegmina are green.
*Distribution: Java. The Genus Caryanda is widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics of the old world.
*Habitat: commonly found in grasslands, in open areas and paths in the forest and in farmland (mainly paddy), 0-1200m asl.

(photo/text by gbohne on Flickr)

clusterpod:

Early Eumastacidae grasshopper instar

predatory bush cricket (Saga pedo)  (by Leonardobattista on Flickr)

Saga pedo is a species of bush cricket, spread throughout the European part of the Mediterranean, and Asia as far east as China. It is a wingless bush cricket, with the body size of up to 12 centimetres (4.7 in), which makes it one of the largest European insects.^[1] Colloquially known as the predatory bush cricket, it is uncommon among its kind due to its carnivorous lifestyle, most often preying on smaller insects, with a known tendency towards cannibalism as well.^[2] For this purpose, it has strong fore and mid legs, equipped with sharp spines. When these animals are hunting, they move about, catching their prey by suddenly leaping on them and grabbing them with their legs. Their prey is usually killed by biting into the throat, and eating is done at capture. Saga pedo is active at dusk and during nighttime, with activity slowly expanding through the day at the end of the season.^[2]

(Wikipedia)   (photo by andriaflickr on Flickr)